Mentors Can Uplift Poor Urban Youths

Kudos to Trinity College student Clara Abramson for her Fresh Talk op-ed "Paris, Hartford Must Lift All Neighborhoods" [Feb. 10]. She pointed to a similarity between terrorist attacks in Paris (where she was studying) by radicalized Parisians and the frustrated minorities in Hartford.

Solving this problem is not easy. The late New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in 1970 that expensive and massive government programs to uplift blacks were not working and that we should accept a period of benign neglect.

Ms. Abramson does not agree. There is one thing that will work: when disenfranchised and disaffected minorities are mentored by college students and others. A loving teacher can change a young black student's life by giving him or her faith in themselves.

A Mentor Corps, like the Peace Corps, is needed. The benefits for the mentors can be exhilarating.